January 2011

It has been a while since I have gotten to put some thoughts down on paper. We have been pretty busy with traveling back and forth to San Antonio for CSF’s Med Board medical appointments.

We also met at the Center For The Intrepid to get him fitted for a brace so his right leg that is considered a “salvage” stops buckling at the knee when he steps forward. He has had 8 surgeries on that leg so far. It is never a good thing for the army docs to call your limb a salvage. To me it gives a visual of a junkyard. Inside of his right leg, he has metal from his right knee to his hip bone. Now, due to his lack of white blood cells we really don’t want him to have to endure any more surgery on that leg. An infection would cause him to lose the leg at the hip and that would be incapable of a prosthetic.

He has a lot of hetero-topic ossification in the limb, which is bone growth that grows all through out the remaining muscle. In other words, it’s bone where he shouldn’t have any. It pinches in against the nerves. Just sitting in a hard wooden chair causes him excruciating pain.

The brace prototype did show some positive results!!! It will take Todd some getting used to working his remaining leg muscles differently with it, but in about 3 weeks, the real brace should be ready for him to try. I hope it helps him walk better. I think for him to walk upright and without a cane, would be the gift he certainly deserves.